THE BODY OF THINGS: Gender, Material Culture and Design in (Post)Soviet Russia
An interdisciplinary conference, Aarhus University, Denmark, March 8-9 2018
Info about event
Time
Location
Aarhus University, Richard Mortensen Stuen, Studenternes Hus, build. 1422 - Fredrik Nielsens Vej 2, 8000 Aarhus C
The conference is a part of the research program “Cultural Transformations” at the School of Communication and Culture and the research program in Global Studies at the School of Culture and Society, Aarhus University.
Conveners
- Birgitte Beck Pristed, Aarhus University, birgitte.pristed@cas.au.dk
- Olga Gurova, Aalborg University, gurova@cgs.aau.dk
- Yulia Karpova, Aarhus University, yulia.karpova@cc.au.dk
Since the late 1990s, the social sciences and the humanities have reconsidered the relations between discourse and materiality and between humans and non-humans, including things. At the same time, scholars of the Soviet Union and its successor states have demonstrated increasing interest in material culture, everyday life and gender. We propose that recent theoretical paradigms such as new materialism, object-oriented ontology, material feminisms, thing theory and others can be useful tools for elucidating complex interrelations between politics, everyday life and professional cultures in the 20th century Russia. This conference initiates a dialogue among scholars of Soviet and post-Soviet history and culture dealing with body and crafts, gender and design, DIY and subjectivity, and related topics.
In the 1920s Liubov’ Popova and Varvara Stepanova famously turned a traditional “feminine craft” of textile into industrial design, or, according to another interpretation, into high art: two areas usually perceived as “masculine.” Speaking of the “Thaw” era, the curators of the recent exhibition in the Museum of the History of Moscow viewed open urban spaces, fashionable semi-transparent clothes from synthetic fabrics, international festivals and exhibitions as interconnected elements of the new mode of life. Taking these two examples as inspirations, researchers from different disciplines and with various methodological toolkits will rethink the narratives of (post)Soviet material culture, gender, and design.
Programme
8 March 2018, Thursday
13:30-14:00 | Get to think: Welcome and conference opening |
14.00 - 15.00 | Keynote talk by Anke Hennig, University of the Arts Berlin and Central Saint Martins College, London. The Speculative Design of Gender - Revolutionary, Soviet and Post-Soviet Dimensions |
15:15 - 16:45 | Panel 1: Women as Designers and Producers Chair: Yulia Karpova, Aarhus University
|
17:00 - 18:00 | Keynote talk by Graham H. Roberts, Université Paris Nanterre. Queering the Stitch: Fashion, Masculinity and the Post-Socialist Body |
9 March 2018, Friday
9.00 - 10.30 | Panel 2: Embodied Labor and DIY Chair: Olga Gurova, Aalborg University
|
11.00 - 12.00 | Keynote talk by Christina Kiaer, Northwestern University: Revolution Every Day: Early Soviet Posters and the Propagandizing of Women |
12:00- 13:00 | Lunch break |
13:00-14:30 | Materialities of Soviet (Post-)Avant-Garde Chair: Birgitte Beck Pristed, Aarhus University
|
15.00 - 16.00 | Panel 3: Soviet Everyday Materialism Chair: Jeremy Morris, Aarhus University
|
16.15 - 17.00 | Final discussion |
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 700913